"I was impressed by the creativity that can be released by having a lucid dream." -- Linda Lane Magallon
In LDE 30 Linda Magallon presented an excellent example of the creative
power of lucid dreaming with her spontaneously produced "Past Lives in
Poetry."
Past Lives in Poetry
(c) 2004 Linda Lane Magallón
"Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that, invent."
The women in Les Guerilleres
When I first had lucid dreams, there wasn't much
written on the subject. Instead, there was a fair amount of information
on the out-of-body experience. After trying, time after time, to have a
traditional OBE, I had become very frustrated. So I went to the source:
I asked my dreams for guidance. Then I had a lucid dream, but it only
served to confuse me.
Hilary, 9/1/83
At the edge of sleep, in the hypnogogic state, I request guidance. I
see a clown-like face in a magic mirror. It changes to a woman with
dark brown hair who is wearing a cap with a feather. She seems to be
riding inside a coach or carriage lined with silk material (circa Robin
Hood or Three Musketeers). I am drawn into the scene enough to feel the
motion of the coach, bumping over rocks, at the speed of a horse at
full gallop. The sensation is very vivid. "What is your name?" I ask.
There is no response, but something prompts me to ask her, "Hilary?" I
think, good, it's a male/female name. At this, she laughs soundlessly.
I peer closely at her face and ask her, "Why can't I have an
out-of-body experience?" She pulls the cap down over her face and turns
into a flat oval shape.
I wrote down the dream and sat puzzling over it.
Then I was inspired to put pen to paper. This is one of the few times
that a poem virtually wrote itself. It just gushed out of me, like the
sudden exodus of some long pent-up energy. And, who knows? Maybe the
roots of my dilemma were in the distant past, many lives in the making.
Or maybe I was just making it all up. Either way, I was impressed by
the creativity that can be released by having a lucid dream.
Heather was once, and Hilary.
Shameless vixens helping themselves to the cosmic stew.
Joyful, never mindful of where or when they came or went.
No.
God, how I envied them. Then, and
Now.
Seven lives we wandered the back country,
Me and my guitar or dulcimer or harp
Or whatever was the instrument in vogue that century,
Ever warning and scolding them for being so fancy free.
And when they'd return from their jaunts to Faraway
And trysts with the local governor or deity
(For they were never ones to carry on with the lower classes)
There I'd be, ready to heal their hearts and bodies,
To nurse their infants and wipe the runny noses of the ragamuffins later,
After they'd grown a bit.
Faithful ever. Like a dog was I.
Longing to risk but not.
Pouring out my love and frustration on the strings.
Well, now, isn't it time for a change?
So where are the Heathers and Hilarys for me now?
Risk I do.
My own children do I love and care for.
But the music is locked in my heart.
This time. This life.
I can't remember whether or not I'd seen Susan
Blackmore's book "Beyond the Body" when I had my dream. You might be
interested to know that, at the beginning of her first OBE, Blackmore
was listening to music, which put her into an altered state of
consciousness. Then she moved slowly into a scene in which she was
thundering along a road as though in a carriage drawn by several horses.
So, I suspect that my dreaming self was tapping me on the shoulder and
saying, "A-hem, Linda. Why are you wondering about an out-of-body
experience? You're already having one!"
Blackmore, Susan. Beyond the Body. (London:
Paladin Books, 1983). Wittig, Monique. Les Guerilleres, trans. by David
Le Vay. (NY: Viking Press, 1971), p. 89.
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